Welcome To The Monocle - Ashoka Business Review's Brand New Newsletter!

Aug 29, 2024

Hello Ashoka!

We hope all of you have had a wonderful summer break (and gotten all the courses you wanted!)

We are delighted to bring to you the first edition of ABR’s revamped and renewed newsletter, The Monocle! As the name suggests, we hope to bring the latest happenings in the business world to the Ashokan community, through bite-sized explainers and interesting tidbits, so you don’t have to get lost in the fine print!

Investments in Focus

Investments have been in the spotlight for the past couple of weeks with Ola Electric, the electric vehicle arm of Ola, going public with its IPO listing on 9th August. The capital raised will be used to accelerate its EV production and infrastructure expansion.
Despite a weak listing of negligible initial gains, the share price eventually shocked everyone by gaining about 40% in just 2 days post listing.

Alongside public markets, Private Equity (PE) deals are also under the spotlight.
Blackstone, one of the world’s biggest PE players, is gearing up to bid north of Rs. 40,000 Crores (around 4 Billion USD), to get a controlling stake in Haldirams - valuing the company at a staggering $8Bn. Should the deal go through, it would be the largest private equity transaction of its kind in India till date. What does this mean for your favourite Indian snacking brand? Haldirams would become financially much stronger and can foray into new markets. But on the flip side, with new management expect changes to its product offerings as well.
But fret not, no changes can possibly be made to Aloo Bhujia!

Not all is well in the Ambani household. Anil Ambani- the younger brother of Mukesh Ambani whose son Anant recently got married in an extravagant $600 million dollar wedding affair - has been banned from trading securities for 5 years & slapped with a fine of Rs25 crores. Several of his associates have also been charged with hefty fines.
The reason? Alleged diversion of funds amounting to several thousand crores from Reliance Home Finance Limited (RHFL) - a company that lends home loans. Anil Ambani has said he is now considering his legal options against the ruling.

In a world not far away

Harley Davidson - boomed in the 90s, might die with the 50s. With the average buyer’s age being 50 and selling half the bikes that it did in 2006, Harley Davidson’s biking business hasn't aged like wine.
Speaking of wine, how much one spends on booze can be a surprising indicator of how an economy is doing, especially for one engaged in war. Russia imported 18% more cognac last year and splurged 80% more on sparkling wine this fiscal year. This vindicates the 20% increase in consumer spending as the EU flirts with recession. Champagne or Champagne?
Despite trade tensions, Germany’s investments into Chinese carmakers stood at €7.3bn in the first half of 2024. This comes at a time when Volkswagen has announced closure of its Brussels plant that churns out 50,000 cars a year. For China, this should come as a respite since consumer sentiment is down and industrial loss making firms have surged to a record 44%.
This month also saw a week of global recession (quite literally) but we hope to cover that in Review. Let’s keep this short, shall we!

Here are some interesting things we discovered this summer

Money Stuff by Matt Levine- Not another run-of-the-mill finance newsletter. Funny, witty and actually enjoyable (somewhat of a rarity). Sign up to the free newsletter here. Yes it’s still free, as Matt Levine’s pinned tweet says.

Whale Hunting - Weekly newsletter covering investigative stories on warlords, dictators, kleptocrats, oligarchs and the likes. Even has a section that tracks the private jet movements of these people. Be sure to give it a read!